It would have been a complete waste of effort and resources unless the organizers of The Guyana Festival pursue an evaluation of the event with a view to determining the extent to which its outcomes were consistent with the goals that it set itself in the first place.
Certainly, the view expressed in last Friday’s issue of the Stabroek Business about the paucity of visitors to the event from abroad was consistent with the turnout on each of the three days and nights of the weekend. With hindsight one doubts that there was ever any serious expectation of a foreign ‘invasion.’ The Guyana Tourism Authority’s hype about overseas marketing and anticipation of foreign visitors was really no more than part of its broader marketing strategy to bestir the local ‘market.’ No one blames the organizers for this particular failing. It is, however, difficult not to find it amusing that they were serious.
While it is by no means a bad idea to seek to create an event designed to bring people to Guyana in droves during a particular time of year, the experience of other countries suggest that those kinds are properly branded over a period of time and then mostly after a good deal of effort, creativity and investment are poured into them. Questions have already been raised as to whether we ever had either the time, the resources or the capacity to plan and execute such an event in the time that we gave ourselves.
Neither the Tourism Ministry nor the Tourism Authority may take this kindly, but it seemed as though The Guyana Festival came somewhat out of the blue – so to speak. The promised aggressive marketing failed to materialize; more than that the final preparations appeared rushed.
All of us were hoping that The Guyana Festival could avoid comparisons with GuyExpo. That did not happen. Those people who said that the event had a more of the same look about it were entirely fair in their assessment. The event appeared to be lacking in creativity.
If an event of the kind that The Guyana Festival was intended to be is to ‘come off’ we would need to have some seriously creative people putting it together, people who can deliver something different (above all else) tasty and entertaining.
The conspicuous exclusion of THAG from the planning and execution of the event makes a genuine mockery of the notion of public/private sector partnership in the creation of a tourism sector. Numbered amongst THAG’s members are people who, by virtue of both their experience and their investments have some knowledge of the tourism sector. That expertise is lacking in both the political sphere and the state bureaucracy. One can only hope that sooner rather than later we will come to understand that some things actually work better without state oversight.
As in some other walks of life where the private sector really ought to have both a more pronounced presence and far more room to express itself creatively, there is still far too much official oversight which is frequently attended by no more than an insistence on making an official presence felt. Not infrequently, it is a counterproductive presence.
Those public events that have to do with product promotion, business development and the promotion of sectors like tourism should be private sector–driven. Government’s role is to provide an enabling environment.
To return to the matter of The Guyana Festival, the question has been asked as to whether February might not have been a better time to stage such an event. That may not be a bad idea because February is the month of Mash and we tend to have more visitors to the country for Mash anyway. Perhaps more to the point, we have, over the years, failed to offer much by way of a Mash programme any way.
If that is what it wants, the Government of Guyana can hardly be faulted for wanting to see the country’s tourism product grow. On the other hand the available evidence might suggest that we are not exactly ‘going places’ as far as tourism is concerned. In this regard the state of our capital is a key factor. Whatever the other reasons may be, much of the reason for its filthy state has to do with the fact that we no longer seem to care. Visitors would.
People are not going to ‘shell out’ good money to travel continually to a country whose capital (at least parts of it) often bears a striking resemblance to a slum – except there are things that are very much worth seeing, the physical conditions notwithstanding.
What we also continue to fail to do – despite the constant bleating about ‘our tourism potential is to build the infrastructure that would make for an enabling environment. Mention has already been made of the importance of training sufficient people to become more than modestly competent in the delivery of the various services associated with a tourism industry and to do so efficiently, in a timely manner and to acceptable standards. Much of this appeared to be absent from the planning for the Festival and it seemed too that at least part of the reason for that had to do with the fact that we lacked the training and the skills to put together the product that we had hoped to have.
It is in the area of marketing that we need to turn things around quickest. Selling ourselves to the world will remain an issue until government starts investing in the country’s image abroad. That has to do with financial and human resources as well as a sound marketing plan.
Three quick points; we should stop talking about marketing Guyana abroad unless we have a comprehensive plan to do so. Attendance at a few trade shows and a few paragraphs in one or two international publications wouldn’t do the job. Secondly, we, the government that is, needs to decide whether it wants to roll out a tourism product badly enough to spend real money on a high profile visitor arrival plan. The third point to be made is that these are demanding professional pursuits that are best left to professionals whom, invariably, are to be found in the private sector. If it may not be a bad idea, sometimes, to use a Minister as Head of an external tourism pursuit in order to clear the political channels, it is a decidedly bad idea to pretend that our politicians are the real specialists since they are not.
If it is hardly a question of outrightly dismissing The Guyana Festival as a failure, it would be equally counterproductive to move to the other extreme of measuring success solely by the yardstick of the “thousands” that were there and doubtless had a good time. That was not anywhere near all that The Guyana Festival was intended to be.
